Ask HN: Isn't there a lightweight and popular Rust?

5 points by dondraper36 8 hours ago

With all these endless debates about Rust and Go, it seems that a lot of software engineers really want a programming language that is as expressive as Rust with its sum types and matching, but also easier in that there is garbage collection, a rich standard library, like in Go.

There are OCaml and F#, but I still see those are very much niche languages with pretty small communities.

wezm 4 hours ago

Might be worth giving these posts a read when thinking about a lightweight Rust:

- https://without.boats/blog/notes-on-a-smaller-rust/ - https://without.boats/blog/revisiting-a-smaller-rust/

It's also niche, but https://gleam.run/ might be a candidate alternate language, depending on your use-case.

CharlieDigital 8 hours ago

    > ...it seems that a lot of software engineers really want

Software engineers may want it, but management wants elasticity in the human resource supply.

Therefore, teams choose JavaScript, Python, Java, and C#.

dondraper36 8 hours ago

Yes, that make sense, of course. A beautiful type system doesn't help businesses make money after all.